YOUTH FOR UNDERSTANDING VLAANDEREN VZW

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The vision of Youth For Understanding (YFU) is “Generations of empowered global citizens for a more peaceful and sustainable world.” To contribute to this long term goal, “YFU’s mission is to advance intercultural understanding and lifelong learning, as well as the development of global competencies, mutual respect and social responsibility through transformational educational exchanges for generations of youth, families and communities.”

Youth For Understanding Flanders (YFU Flanders) is part of a global YFU network consisting of independent non-profit organisations in over 40 countries. It was formed as YFU Flanders in 1984 but had already been operating since the 1960's in cooperation with YFU Netherlands, Wallonia and Luxembourg. YFU is an organisation that was founded after the end of the Second World War specifically to promote inter-cultural dialogue and to provide opportunities for an enriching cultural experience among youth everywhere. By design, all YFU programmes and initiatives are linked to an educational experience, and in all of its programmes and initiatives, YFU actively promotes and reinforces a frame of reference for continual learning that can be operative in any variety of contexts in the course of the participants’ lives. Young people’s natural eagerness to learn and the opportunities that YFU provides for cultural immersion and intercultural growth interact to create optimum conditions for the profoundest kind of learning, i.e. learning that is not only conducive to personal growth, but also to societal advancement.

The core activity of YFU Flanders is the organisation of international student exchange programmes for young people between the age of 15 and 19. Additionally, for those who cannot participate in such an exchange, and for those who are too young, YFU Flanders organises Cultural Games (the so-called “Cultuurspelen”) and Coloured Glasses workshops in the Flanders region. YFU Flanders offers these activities free of charge in order to enable as many youth as possible to participate. The educational goals for both of these initiatives are the same as for the exchange programmes, i.e. to promote the participants’ awareness, knowledge and understanding of different cultures, and to enhance and enrich the social skills and intercultural competences of young people.

YFU Flanders operate a small office in Mechelen, employing 3,2 FTE plus a small number of international interns. The main task of the office staff is to coordinate the marketing, organisational and educational efforts required to run exchange programmes both for Flemish students going abroad and international students coming to Flanders, and to organise the Cultural Games and Coloured Glasses workshops that take part across Flanders. In these latter initiatives, the office staff have been regularly assisted in the past decade by international volunteers with a European Solidarity Corps (formerly EVS) background. Most tasks related to the student exchange programmes, however, are carried out by Flemish YFU volunteers, who are typically either former exchange students, host families, or sympathizers who contribute their time to YFU's activities. YFU Flanders is governed by a Board of Directors who themselves are active volunteers. The Board regularly meets every four weeks and provides oversight on the general operation of the organisation.

The long term goal of Youth For Understanding is to help create global peace and understanding. YFU has always been an organisation seeking for ways to help young people to better understand the world. By making young people more aware of stereotypes, human rights and intercultural communication, we hope that they will be able to communicate more easily and in a better way with people from another cultural background. By enabling youth to experience other cultures for themselves and gain a first-hand experience of other ways of life, YFU hopes to help them to become open-minded, respectful and socially aware, global citizens.

Volunteering project